MUSLIM HATE OF NUDITY
Those involved
in naked photo shoot in Dubai to be deported
ISABEL DEBRE
Tue, April 6,
2021
DUBAI, United
Arab Emirates (AP) — Authorities in Dubai say those involved in a naked photo
shoot on a balcony that went viral and prompted a crackdown in the city will be
deported.
Dubai’s
Attorney General Issam Issa al-Humaidan
said Tuesday that the public prosecution has completed investigations and those
accused of public debauchery will be sent back to their countries. Authorities
declined further comment.
Earlier
Tuesday, authorities confirmed that 11 Ukrainian women and a Russian man who
were involved in the photo shoot were arrested. The footage came as a shock in
the Gulf Arab sheikhdom governed by an Islamic legal code.
The move
Tuesday is highly unusual for the legal system in Dubai, an absolutely ruled
sheikhdom. Typically, such cases go to trial or otherwise adjudicated before
deportation.
Police in
Dubai have arrested 11 Ukrainian women and a Russian man for their involvement
in a nude photo shoot on a high-rise balcony in the city, authorities said
Tuesday, after the footage went viral and prompted a crackdown in the Gulf Arab
sheikhdom.
Dubai is a top
destination for the world's Instagram influencers and models, who fill their
social media feeds with slick bikini-clad selfies from the coastal emirate's
luxury hotels and artificial islands.
But the city's
brand as a glitzy foreign tourist destination has at times provoked controversy
and collided with the sheikhdom's strict rules governing public behavior and
expression, which are based on Islamic law, or Shariah.
The nude photo
shoot scandal comes just days before Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim
calendar, and as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lands in nearby Doha,
Qatar, for an official state visit. Over the years, Dubai increasingly has
promoted itself as a popular destination for Russians on holiday. Signs in
Cyrillic are a common sight at the city's major malls.
Dubai
police announced
earlier this week they had arrested a group of people on
debauchery charges over a widely shared video showing naked women posing in
broad daylight on a balcony overlooking the city's upscale Marina neighborhood.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry confirmed Tuesday that 11 of detained women were
Ukrainian, while a Russian diplomat in Dubai said the photographer who filmed
the naked women held Russian citizenship.
Dubai police
declined to identify those detained. More than a dozen women appeared in the
video and the nationalities of the others arrested were not immediately known.
The generally
pro-Kremlin tabloid Life identified the Russian man arrested as the head of an
information technology firm in Russia’s Ivanovo region, though his firm denied
he had anything to do with the photo shoot. The Associated Press was not able
to find if those arrested had legal representation or reach a lawyer for them.
Stanislav Voskresensky, the governor of Ivanovo, asked the Russian
Foreign Ministry and Russia’s ambassador to the UAE to offer the Russian man
their support.
“We don’t
abandon our own,” Voskresensky wrote on social media.
It's not the
first time that foreign social media influencers, amateur and pro, have drawn
unwanted scrutiny in the United Arab Emirates. Earlier this year, as
Dubai promoted itself
as a major pandemic-friendly party haven for travelers fleeing
tough lockdowns elsewhere, European reality TV show stars came under fire for
flaunting their poolside Dubai vacations on social media and for bringing the
coronavirus back home. Denmark and the United Kingdom later banned
flights to the UAE as virus cases surged in the federation of seven sheikhdoms.
Although the
UAE has recently made legal
changes to attract foreign tourists and investors, allowing
unmarried couples to share hotel rooms and residents to drink alcohol without a
license, the Gulf Arab country’s justice system retains harsh penalties for
violations of the public decency law.
Nudity and
other “lewd behavior,” carry penalties of up to six months in prison and a fine
of 5,000 dirhams ($1,360). The sharing of pornographic material is also
punishable with prison time and hefty fines. The country’s majority state-owned
telecom companies block access to pornographic websites.
Foreigners,
who make up some 90% of the UAE’s population of over 9 million, have landed in
jail for their comments and videos online, as well as for offenses considered
tame in the West, like kissing in public.
Dubai police
often turn a blind eye to foreigners misbehaving — until they don't.
Painting with bare breasts removed from
Swedish Riksdag dining room
Dec. 19, 2013
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- A painting of a bare-breasted woman has
been removed from the Swedish Riksdag's guest dining
room on orders from the legislature's deputy speaker.
Deputy Speaker Susanne Eberstein
of the Social Democrat party ordered the painting, "Juno" by baroque
artist G.E. Schroder, to be removed from the guest dining room, where it had
hung since 1983, TheLocal.se reported Thursday.
"We routinely change paintings from time
to time," a Riksdag representative said in
response to an inquiry from news agency TT.
A parliamentary source who asked to remain anonymous
told TT lawmakers were concerned about the painting's effects on foreign
visitors.
"You have to think of the foreign guests,
especially those from Muslim countries," the source said.
Eberstein said the painting's
removal was also for the comfort of herself and her fellow female officials.
"I think it is more a feminist issue. It's
tiresome [looking at] a bare-breasted woman when I sit at public dinners with
foreign guests. I think it feels a little hard to sit there with men who look
at us women," Eberstein said.
Ahmadi Muslim Boy Expelled for Not Bathing Nude
PRESS RELEASE
NUDE BATHING
(Rashid Ahmad Chaudhry)
Hashim Ahmad, an eleven year
old boy, was expelled from school a week after he joined the fee paying
Friern Barnet Grammar School, North London, because he objected to participate
in communal nude bathing after the P.E. and games session.
Hashim, son of Mr
Rashid Ahmed of North London, said that he believed that Islam does not allow
its followers to go naked in the company of others. Hashim's parents approached
the headmaster of the school and tried to resolve the situation. They requested
that their son should be allowed to take bath in swimming trunks, but the
headmaster refused to give such permission.
During the first week at school when Hashim was
forced to take a shower in the nude, he was so upset that he started to vomit
when he reached home. His doctor, therefore, wrote a note to the headmaster
asking him to reconsider his stand and find a compromise in the situation, but
this request also fell on deaf ears.
The Muslim community of Great Britain is
furious about the incident and is taking the case to the Race Relations
Council.
The father of another Muslim boy, who also paid
the fees, has withdrawn his boy from the school after his similar request was
turned down by the headmaster.
The Imam of the London Mosque, Maulana
Ata-ul-Mujeeb Rashed, has issued a statement on the issue: "Communal nude
bathing is completely out of the question for a Muslim. It is compulsory for
all Muslims to cover the private parts of their bodies and make sure that these
are never exposed to others at any time. It is incumbent upon every Muslim to
adhere to these teachings and rules most faithfully and there is no room for
any exception in it."
Mr Rashid Ahmad Chaudhry,
the Press Secretary of the worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Association, when
contacted remarked: "Compulsory group nude bathing in a school is a gross
infringement upon the civil liberties of a child. Private parts are just what their
name implies and are not for indiscriminate viewing by others, whether at a
young age or old.I wonder
why such a practice is allowed to continue in British schools when other dehumanising rituals such as corporal punishment have all
been stopped. I wonder how in this modern age and in a multicultural society
such as ours, a headteacher can force the youngsters in his charge to partipate in nude bathing. The sensible teachers who care
for children have realised this problem and have
dropped the requirement of having group showers in the nude, specially in the case of children who express their
distaste for such a practice. However, regrettably, here is a headmaster who
was obstinate enough in his approach to expel a young promising boy from school
simply because he refused to take part in the parade of naked bodies."